Three-dimensional imaging of flat natural and cultural heritage objects by a Compton scattering modality

International audienceCharacterisation and interpretation of flat ancient material objects, such as those found in archaeology, palaeoenvironments, palaeontology and cultural heritage, have remained a challenging task to perform by means of conventional X-ray tomography methods due to their anisotropic morphology and flattened geometry. To overcome limitations of mentioned methodologies for such samples, a new imaging modality based on Compton scattering is proposed in this work. Classical X-ray tomography treats Compton scatter data as noise in the image formation process, while in Compton scatter tomography the conditions are set such that Compton data becomes the principal image contrasting agent. Under this conditions, we are able, on the first hand, to avoid relative rotations between the sample and the imaging setup, and on the other hand, to obtain three dimensional data even when the object is supported by a dense material by exploiting back-scattered photons. Mathematically this problem is addressed by means of a Conical Radon transform and its inversion.The image formation process and object reconstruction model are presented. The feasibility of this methodology is supported by numerical simulations